The Time-Travelling Tourist
by Someoddball
Summary: The adventures of the first incarnation of Time-lady Lenala, the Time-Travelling Tourist. Read as she takes pictures, eats exotic food and occasionally saves lives and stops evil schemes because of reasons outside of her control. It's not like she WANTS to get shot at after all!


_It's hot,_ was the first thing that many people who had gone to Adelaide thought that day. The horribly warm sun was glaring down on the city, unhindered by the few small clouds that had somehow managed to survive. From the packed trains and trams filled with warm bodies, to the traffic jammed streets where the metal of the cars reflected blinding light into pedestrian's eyes, to that one corporate executive in a full suit sitting in a small room with a defunct fan, the word on everyone's lips and in everyone's mind, was **HOT**.

The intense glare of the windows of the towering buildings was enough to nearly blind the pedestrians walking on the bustling footpath, causing many people to periodically stop and rub their eyes in pain. This very glare had already caused several car accidents and one loss of life, causing several drivers and pedestrians to both drive and walk cautiously and slowly, giving the busy streets an eerie "slow-motion" feeling to anyone above, somehow generating a similar feeling to driving over a steep hill and feeling your stomach drop for the briefest second.

In the traffic jammed streets that were simply filled to brimming with cars bumper to bumper, the heat was enough to cause several vehicles to overheat, never to start properly again. This, while annoying to the passengers in the faulty car and the cars behind, was a little humorous to the car _**just**_ in front, in a dark comedy sort of way. At least until either their car, or the car in front, broke down due to overheating. No-one would be particularly amused in that scenario.

The overwhelming heat of the sun had managed to short-circuit hundreds of air-conditioners around the city, making the already-warm interiors unbelievably HOT. Gyms had been turned into (_melted_) ice-cream parlours for the body-builders. Libraries became sleeping places for hundreds of people who simply hadn't enough energy from the heat (_and the general atmosphere that exists in libraries around the globe_).

Anyone who had to attend a formal gathering of some sort had half a mind to jump into the closest swimming pool (_and the other half agreed_). Because of the short-circuited air-conditioners, the coolest places in the entire city happened to be the bright, stuffy, noisy, boiling and rather uncomfortable streets throughout Adelaide.

It was, quite simply, a rather miserable day in Adelaide.

So it was quite strange when a smiling olive-skinned woman with her short, messy black hair and wide-open gleaming blue eyes, wearing a late 18th century navy lieutenant's coat, a Victorian-era blue double-breasted waistcoat worn over a modern grey work-shirt, dark blue slacks with black pockets, black combat boots that were largely covered by the slacks and a camera from sometime in the sixties worn around her neck.

She didn't seem terribly bothered by the intense heat and she simply went about her walk, stopping occasionally to look at certain buildings or take seemingly random or pointless pictures of everyday things.

Everyone chose to ignore her, they all felt warmer looking at her and they wanted it to _stop_.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

The olive-skinned woman had made her way down King William's road, past the Adelaide Festival Centre (taking a picture with an audible *SNAP* and a bright *FLASH*), across North Terrance, past the South Australian Museum (*SNAP**FLASH*), before making her way down Pulteney Street to turn at Grenfell St, walking straight into the bustling Rundle Mall (*SNAP**FLASH**SPEND*) and wandered about a bit, taking in the sights and trying out some of the local food. She was certainly surprised to find a wide variety of foods from all over the world in the shopping court, and had bought small amounts from everything, having a Chicken Parmigiana with Rice and a burger from one of the many "fast-food" restaurants she found scattered all over the place. She topped the whole thing off with a chocolate milkshake with a little bit of ice-cream on the bottom.

It was nice.

Eventually, after dumping her rubbish into the closest bin and making her way through the crowded area, she took the old glass elevator up to the ground floor and made her way outside. Walking out into the middle of the cobbled road with her head rotating in every direction possible, her eyes eventually found a 10-20 storey building with the sign "Toys R Us" a short distance away from her.

She walked at a brisk pace towards the building, foregoing to front door and instead turning into the L-shaped alleyway adjacent, trying her best to look like she was supposed to be there.

She pulled out a small, bent piece of metal and placed it into a door near the end of the building before reaching back into her pocket and retrieving a small round and smoothed device with a screen on one end and buttons on the sides.

Pressing a button, the on/off switch as it was, the screen came to life, displaying a screen-full of computer-speak before blacking out and reactivating with the words "Welcome back, Lenala" in a pleasant font displayed happily on the screen.

Pressing the third button down on the left side, the message was replaced by the words "Scanning mode". Confirming her selection, Lenala place the device closer to the locked door before pressing a button on the underside of the device. The screen displayed a turning hourglass for a few short seconds before displaying the best way to jam the bent piece of metal into the door to unlock it.

Turning her device (Which she still hadn't come up with a name for) into standby mode and placing it back into her waistcoat pocket; she followed its advice and gently rammed the metal into the lock with as much strength she could muster.

The door gently slammed against the wall it was attached to.

Lenala stood there with her eyes closed, head pulled further into her neck (almost giving her a double chin) and her arm stretched out from where she had rammed the piece of metal.

Of course, then the door bounced off of the wall, broke the hinges and slapped Lenala right in the face, causing her to fall backwards into some (thankfully) empty trashcans directly behind her, before catching herself by splaying her arms out and getting a purchase on the dumpster directly to her right and the brick wall to her left.

The door had stopped swinging and had found a comfortable position sideways just in front of the doorway.

And then it fell down.

Lenala huffed, before she picked herself up and quickly jogged over to brace herself against the wall next to the doorframe, looking at it and waiting for anyone to come out.

Five seconds later a decidedly non-human head, which only had the confidence to appear due to the L-shape of the alleyway it was looking into, peeked out of the doorframe to see what might have caused the destruction of the door.

The head was avian in nature, with a long beige beak being the first thing one would notice. The rest of the head had green fur, with two long stalks with narrowed eyeballs on top. "_On purpose to appear threatening, or a by-product of evolution_?" Lenala mused to herself.

A relatively long and green-furred neck connected the head to the small body. Lenala noted that, while the creature had long legs that stretched downwards and backwards until it reached the knee, where it went more forward, ending with three-pronged feet with talons on each of the three toes, Birdie (as she had quickly named the creature the moment she saw the beak) had no arms at all. Instead, there was a combat harness of some sort with what looked like two plasma cannons, one for each side.

She also noted, when Birdie turned its head in the opposite direction of where Lenala was standing, that Birdie had five braids of fur on the back of its head, with the outer most two being the shortest, the inner two being longer and the middle braid being the longest. Lenala wasn't terribly sure if the braids happened to indicate a sort of rank, whether it was simply personal choice, or if it was a cultural thing. She'd figure it out, she was sure of it. She didn't know much about these creatures, evident seeing as she couldn't quite remember its species name (_something beginning with 'Pat'_).

Lenala didn't really want to have to face dual plasma cannons, but figured that as long as they didn't revolve independently, she'd be alright.

Lenala recalled everything she could about these aliens off of the top of her head (which was fairly limited, given the time limit), their homeworld, bits of their various cultures, important religious and historical events, medical details, popular cuisine and that one movie she saw when these creatures ('_PATRUKAW_! _It's Patrukaw!'_) initiated first contact with the Gnatgats several hundred years ago.

Of course, she decided to focus on medical history.

Lenala waited for the Patrukaw to turn his (it was a he) head her way.

The Patrukaw recoiled in surprise, and before he could do anything Lenala smiled and said "Hello" in an upper-class British accent with just a smidge of arrogance that was ever-present.

After her greeting, she grabbed the Patrukaw by his beak, preventing him from calling out, and _**slammed**_ his head against the door-frame, hitting a sensitive part of the neck that would temporarily paralyse him for one hour, seventeen minutes and forty-eight seconds.

"I would say that I was sorry about that," Lenala said, picking up the Patrukaw like he was a sack of grain and placing him on her shoulder, "but I'm not. I'm actually rather proud of myself." By this point, Lenala had walked over to the nearby dumpster which was already partially open. "I will however," She continued as she opened the dumpster a little more with one arm, "apologise for this."

With that, she chucked the Patrukaw into the dumpster with a great heave, rubbish bags and cans of drink making a rather muted ruckus.

Reaching up with both hands to grab the edge of the dumpster lid, Lenala leaned her head over the entrance with a smile and said, "I'll see you in just over an hour, yeah? Don't worry; the bins aren't due to be emptied today." Slowly shutting the lid, as not to make an even greater amount of noise as what she already had so far, Lenala turned around and made her way back to the broken door. As she leaned in, all that she saw was a relatively- empty storage room filled with a few rows of cardboard boxes that were either empty, filled with broken product or filled with lazy workers' magazines.

Lenala walked into the storage room, slightly confused, and had a quick look at everything, looking for a possible entrance into the Patrukaw base. She checked all of the boxes, pricking her thumb against a decapitated Elmo, scanned all of the shelves with her eyes, knocked on all of the walls and stomped her feet on the floor – all in an attempt to either gain entrance to where the Patrukaw were hiding or to find some clue as to where they could be.

After several minutes of searching Lenala huffed and sat down on a nearby chair, her pride bruised. She took a moment to gather her mind and _think_ about the situation.

Situation:

A Rouge Patrukaw group, either a cell of some sort, a business group or a bunch of thugs on a high, are slowly heating up the earth—likely for colonisation purposes. Patrukaw homeworld extremely arid, the heat would be enough to severely burn a Human but would barely be anything for a Patrukaw, even the heat being generated in the city would be rather nippy.

The Patrukaw are obviously using Adelaide as a staging area, it being the hottest place in the world for the season (there are far hotter areas, but those temperatures would be rather normal).

Then the question would be why are they using Adelaide as a staging area when it would be obvious that they'd be detected?

Did they not expect anyone on this planet to figure them out? Were they idiots? Or was this whole thing a decoy?

Lenala certainly hoped that this wasn't a decoy; she desperately wanted her ship back.

There were two courses of action Lenala could take in this scenario.

Course of action one: Search the rest of the building to see if this was indeed where the Patrukaw were hiding. The risk being that it would take some time and, if this building was a decoy, time wasn't something she had much of (_HA_!).

Course of action two: Leave the building and find a transmitter of some sort to scan the area to find where they could be. There were a few issues with this course of action.

Issue one: Toys R Us could be, in fact, the destruction of humanity and she could be going in the wrong direction.

Issue two: The transmitter would have a limited range, meaning that if she didn't pick up a signal besides the Toys R Us building, they could very well be somewhere even hotter, masking their signal.

Issue three: Just becau-

The wall opposite of Lenala opened with a quiet whoosh, leaving Lenala staring at a sort of maroon-ish brown furred Patrukaw that was standing in the now-doorway.

Lenala and the Patrukaw held eye contact for a good five seconds, neither of them moving, barely daring to breathe.

Lenala sat there on her chair, arms crossed with one hand in her jacket.

The Patrukaw stood there in the now-doorway, her eyes wide (_So, not an evolutionary trait then_) and her beak slightly open.

Finally, Lenala dared to break the stalemate and opened her mouth.

"Hello, how's li-"

The Patrukaw made to move for the controls on the inside of the elevator, using one of her legs to reach up (_legs are fairly strong and flexible, to be able to do that_) and press the buttons.

Unfortunately for her, Lenala had used her hand that was inside of her jacket to reach into her waistcoat and grab her device she had used on the door and _threw_ it right at the Patrukaw, hitting her on the side of her face and forcing her to stumble back.

Lenala capitalised on this, and rushed up towards the Patrukaw and slammed her against the far end wall of the elevator.

Before she could further abuse the poor avian, the Patrukaw head butted Lenala causing her hands to fly up to her face as she fell backwards, her legs constantly steadying her before giving out and causing her to stumble even more.

Coming to rest on a shelving unit a little to the side of the elevator entrance Lenala looked up, only to see a taloned foot coming towards her chest, sole first.

The hit connected, causing both Lenala and the shelving unit to fall backwards onto the floor with a great smash, with the posh fighter giving out a groan.

The Patrukaw jumped at Lenala, only for Lenala to roll out of the way and smack her avian attacker across the back of her head with a Tickle-Me Elmo.

The Patrukaw slumped down into the shelving unit, her legs briefly giving out before getting up again and facing the intruder.

However Lenala had already thrown a punch, hitting the left side of the Patrukaw's face, forcing her head right. Then, as fast as lightning, Lenala had thrown another punch at the right side of her face.

But before she could go for the left again, the Patrukaw had thrown all of her weight against Lenala so as to force them both onto the floor, avian on top and mammal on the bottom.

Lenala had to finish this before another Patrukaw came up to investigate. Her attack with the Tickle-Me Elmo had been her first attempt to end the brawl quickly, but she had neglected to put enough force behind her attack.

And brawling was simply beneath her.

Rolling the both of them over, Lenala had forced the Patrukaw to be directly behind the shelving unit. Her plan was simple, bash the back of the bird's head against the metal to incapacitate her as fast as possible.

Quick and, if she didn't put _too_ much force into it, clean.

Grabbing the sides of the Patrukaw's head, Lenala continuously slammed the avian against the metal of the shelving unit with a resonate _thunk-clang! _

Finally, the Patrukaw was limp and Lenala rolled off of her with a drawn-out sigh.

After a brief rest, Lenala checked to see that the Patrukaw was still alive as she was worried that she had put far too much force into her rather aggressive attack.

Assuring herself that the bird was fine, simply unconscious (she'd put a _bit_ too much force into her attack, but not a terrible amount), Lenala dusted herself off, stood up with a slight grimace and walked into the elevator.

Bending over to retrieve her thingamajig, Lenala noticed that she'd picked up a somewhat nasty bruise on her cheekbone. No doubt that she had one on her stomach area too, what with the stinging that she could feel there. She assured herself that the one on her face would be gone within a week or so.

Straightening her back, putting her chin up and rolling her shoulders, she pocketed her thingamajig and pressed the '_down'_ button on the inside of the elevator.

The door closed and she felt the sensation of downwards motion, towards the Patrukaw base no doubt.

At least she wouldn't have to find a transmitter of some sort anymore.


End file.
